BOOK II
Greer
CHAPTER 17
The Goddess led her to the southwest.
She trotted endlessly through unfamiliar, yet universal, forests, her ears pricked for sounds of danger. She picked her way carefully through parklands and open basins, her eyes alert for movement. Other animals, as pure of instinct as she, shared her travels briefly or offered her their homes and foraging grounds for as long as she would tarry. She ran with the deer and the wolf, gathered seeds with the squirrel and dove, hunted with the hawk and vulture. Each opened its life to her for whatever brief time she would spend and for that short time they were siblings and one under the Goddess.
Then she would go on.
She avoided humankind. In the dark center of her soul, she felt cut off from them—different. She sensed the way of them: thinking, reasoning, blocking out their instincts with a conscious design, as if they might become more than the Goddess within them. And she knew how she seemed to them on those infrequent occasions when they glimpsed her. She looked feral—half-naked, dirty, scratched and bruised. She ran half crouching like a wild thing and flickered away from sight in a heartbeat. No one ever saw her twice. She had a lot of open land to roam.
She knew the cold time was coming, not so much by the chill temperature at night or by the colors of the leaves, but by the smell of the air and a surging in her blood. She drifted further south, following the sun. Some of the velvet-racked deer came with her.
In the lowlands there would not be the killing cold but, she found, food was scarcer than in the rich forested heights. This low area was almost desert and more than once she shared a rancid meal with coyotes and vultures. The sun—even at the solstice—browned her skin and the wind lashed it to hardness. Her feet became so callused she could walk on shimmering hot sand unhurt and her short, broken fingernails became adequate tools for digging. She became an animal of that desert fringe.
The cold time was a boon there. When snow mantled the faraway mountains that seemed to float on a misty horizon, rain fell on the lowlands and they bloomed. Backwards from all other areas, the desert grew lush and green in the wintertime and life teemed there. She never wanted for food that winter. Whatever her body craved—fiber, flesh, fat or protein—she could find. Animal-like, she let her body lead her, whether to food or water or to sleep or to explore. Her body grew lean and firm, supplely muscled. Keenly attuned to her environment, she lived within it unknowingly efficient, unthinkingly pure.
When the cold time began to lose its bite, she turned her face westward and wondered at the smell of the wind. This desert would not be a good home when the sun was high and hot. She went west.
Low mountains lined up before her in small, scattered chains. She found a way around most of them but had to climb a few. From their low crests, she saw the land sprawl away westward, disappearing into a blue haze. The blue seemed to shimmer and she felt it call her.
The further west she went, the moister the air became. She came upon a place where the earth had torn open and a great river of molten rock had flooded the land. The river was so wide she could not see across it. Apprehensive of the endless swathe of sharp, brittle rock, she still heard the call of the far place beyond and had to answer it. For three days she crossed the black rock, luckily leaving only small traces of blood on sharp edges here or there. When she reached the other side, she lay down and burrowed into the warm sand and slept gratefully.
The land turned moist, humid, green. Although unforested, plants grew thick and she resorted to animal trails through the greenery. Food was abundant again, although the varieties were strange to her. Testing one by one as hunger directed her, she quickly sorted out the nourishing from the empty, the sweet from the bitter.
One day she came to a strange area where the air smelled odd and her skin chilled in alarm. Although no large trees grew in this huge openness, grass and shrubs sprang up happily enough and all she could see through the grassy carpet was some kind of debris. For a full half day she lay back at the perimeter of the area, watching, smelling, waiting. She sensed danger yet could see none. She felt pain but not of her own. She sensed confusion, yet nothing moved.
No, something did. A lizard surged up the side of a—thing, a white, squarish thing, and relaxed in the sun. This area was full of such things, like stone but not stone, scattered, jumbled, piled. She wanted to look closer but the rampant feelings of pain and danger kept her back.
Yet the lizard felt no pain. She gathered her courage and went to explore.
It was almost more than she could do. Many beings had died here and their dying energy plucked at her like skeletal fingers. She picked a careful way over littered rock-things and felt bombarded by sensations. There was pain here, and fear and panic and incredible confusion. She learned to touch a foot lightly to a rock-thing, feeling with her mind before she put her weight on it because some of them were so imbued with such emotional violence that the sensations drove her back, faltering away from the source. This was a very strange, very sad place. Only a short time was enough for her. As the sun balanced in the sky before her, she stepped gingerly out of the rock-thing morass and skirted the rest of its boundaries on her westward track.
Low mountains presented themselves to her again, lush, green-covered mountains this time. She found animal trails that led in any direction she could want and took her time exploring. She spent four days on the east slope of the ridge, walking, eating, resting, sleeping. Finally, idly, she crested the dorsal ridge of the range and looked down on a new world.
Water—as far as she could see. Below her the west slope of the mountains convoluted into rain-creased gullies that ran more and more shallow toward the suddenly flat, endless shore. There, brilliant sand sparkled at her like stars and beyond that—the great water.
She’d never seen so much of it. It went forever, extending both north and south past hazy headlands and reaching out incredibly far, seemingly to the curve of the earth. The sight of it was at once frightening and thrilling. In the warm sunlight, her skin dimpled with chill bumps and she swallowed nervously. She drank in the sight of all that blue, blue water.
Then she started down toward it.
The dry watercourses of the western slope twisted frustratingly and it took her long hours before she reached the shore. The sun was just setting as she did, a fiery orange ball floating on the watery horizon. She stood quietly in the still-warm sand and watched it sink slowly beneath distant, unseen waves. When it was gone, all that was left was the pounding of the surf and her.
She trod gingerly to the shoreline. The surge of wave sent fingers of froth reaching for her feet and she skittered back. The wave spent itself and ebbed back empty-handed. Tiny bubbles of air pocked the wet sand. She walked forward again, her bare feet sinking into the cool, gelatinous sand.
Another wave, smaller, rushed on shore toward her. Planting her feet, clenching her jaw and fists, she stood firm against its onslaught and the water surged playfully about her ankles. On its backward ebb, it drew out the sand from around her feet and she felt the ground sucking at her heels. Then the wave was running back toward the ocean, leaving her unhurt.
How wondrous, she thought. If she had not seen it herself, she would not have believed it could exist. This was truly a Goddess-place. She spent the night on the beach, huddled amid some sun-warm rocks, sitting up so she could watch the endless ebb and surge of the waves all night long.
She spent many days on the shoreline. Food was plentiful and she made friends of some strangely adapted animals that showed her their secrets for living in water. It wasn’t long before she was comfortable there and although she never lost her awe of the ocean, she did resolve her fear. Soon the water, huge and powerful and salty, was her companion.
She went north up the coastline. Great stands of moss-laden forest called to her and she followed the sand until it disappeared beneath the roots of huge trees. These trees, she knew, had been standing almost as long as the ocean had
been pulsing out its drumbeat on the sand; far longer than even the rock-things, longer than any other living thing she knew. Catching at a faraway memory in her mind, she thought the huge towering trees with their shadow-dappled root hollows were much like a mountain with many caves and she felt at home there.
Yet still she traveled. She strode further north, yet made periodic forays into the interior to discover what she could. The days blurred and warm times melted into cold times, and cold times turned brittle and broke into warmth. She knew no more than where she had been that day, what she had eaten, and looked ahead to no more than what direction she would go tomorrow.
Occasionally she came upon rock-things or other strange, artificial things that were not Goddess-pure, but creations of humankind. Most of these things held little interest for her and less understanding, but once in a great while she would find something drenched in sharp, intense feeling and she would explore it carefully before going on. Almost all of them carried pain and fear. She learned little else.
The seasons flowed one into another until she had little thought for them. She roamed where she would—forests, plains, deserts, coastlines. Her life was directionless, yet directed unerringly by something beyond her. She cared only for where her feet carried her next, what food filled her stomach next, what stream cooled her throat next. She was not the least bit aware that her unhurried footsteps were taking her back to a place she’d been before.
The days were warming again, yet she was only intuitively aware of that, cloaked as she was in the cooling shade of the forest canopy. She moved soundlessly through the midday dimness, almost invisible in the dappling light and shadow that the leaves cast down on her. How long had she traveled this particular forest? She had no way to tell.
Up ahead, the trees marched in legions up a mountain crest and although it was a crest like any other, she felt agitated. Something had been pulling at her, plucking at her, for days now and as she neared the crest the feeling intensified. What was beyond that ridge? Surely nothing terrible. She had seen everything there was to see in the area she’d traveled—great, yawning gorges that seemed bottomless; angry rivers that frothed more white than blue and chewed stone with their foaming teeth; spires of rock that reached higher than a hawk’s flight; great empty lands where sand and only sand lived out its lifeless existence; she had seen all that and more. What could be beyond the ridge?
Unthinkingly, she slowed. The day was young yet; she had no reason to hurry. She had eaten little and now turned her attention to foraging. Her eye was so practiced that she found a sweet tuber plant almost immediately and she sat down to dig the choice root out of the ground. It was a large one; she would not need to eat again soon. In the swaying, dappled shadow of the forest she rested and made her meal.
The ridge called her. She felt angry. Why should she go that way? There were countless other ways to go. She could go east; the forest thinned in that direction and she smelled open grasslands beyond. Or she could go north again; that last river she had crossed was sweet and smooth flowing; she could follow it westward if she wanted. Why should she go southeast?
The ridge called her.
Reluctant, angry, a little frightened, she wiped the juice of the tuber from her dirty hands and started toward the ridge. Whatever it was, she would see it, then … then she would do whatever she wanted.
She trudged up the hillside. The trees, companions just moments before, seemed distant now, as if they watched with detached interest. She felt no supportive bond with them now, no community. Whatever she was doing, she was doing alone.
The trees thinned as she neared the ridge, stepping aside for her. The strange pulling sensation became a sound in her ears, a rhythmic sound that pulsed and pounded in her brain. Her breathing quickened and she felt lightheaded. The sun poured through the thinning canopy, partially blinding her. She scrabbled the last bit up the incline and stood on the ridge. Ready to meet the challenge of whatever might face her there, she turned her eyes southeastward.
Snowcapped mountains gleamed at her, beckoning.
She sat down in the clearing atop the ridge and eyed the far mountains through the trees. Yes, they called her. She felt her skin prickle at the sight. She’d seen those mountains before. She’d been to them before. She’d begun there. She would end there.
But not today. Driven with a nervous energy, she set about making herself comfortable for the night. She found a hollow at the base of a tree, already carpeted with soft pine needles and mulch, and she altered it to her liking. She had a view of the mountains from there. She had eaten well of the large tuber so hunger wouldn’t affect her, but for once, the darkness would. Not sure why, she felt driven to look for dried twigs—particular twigs, of a plant she had not thought of for a very long time. She must have a fire—only a very small one as, camped on the ridge, any light could be seen for a long distance and she was too habituated to isolation to be comfortable broadcasting her position. But she had to have these twigs, these particular twigs. Searching the underbrush, she combed the forest until she found them.
The sun sliced sideways through the trees, its golden late afternoon rays alive with drifting motes. She sat in her cushioned hollow and made a pyramid of her twigs, supported by dry mosses and needles. All was in readiness. She deliberately turned away from the mountains and watched as the sun’s rays levered down through the trees, their source sinking unseen toward a tree-shrouded horizon.
Cloaked in long shadows that pooled and ran together, the forest stilled. The green depths changed to gray, the gray to a murky, colorless twilight. No breeze lifted the leaves.
Staring straight up through the trees, she saw the first star wink on, strengthening. Its pale, unsteady light seemed pitiful in the dark indigo of the wide sky. She watched it, wishing it strength. Somehow, with it there watching over her, she did not feel so alone.
Something caught the edge of her mind, some small movement in the forest. She tore her eyes from the star and focused them on the darkness of the tree-shrouded depths. Her eyes, so practiced at recognizing still shapes, picked out the silhouette of a doe peering above a bush. Its huge ears, cupped toward the human, were motionless. It stood frozen in wariness, alert, all but invisible.
The woman sensed the deer’s distrust. She was no longer a sister to the four-legged ones. Somehow that shimmering cloak of connectedness had vanished. That chimera of wildness, of instinctiveness, had evaporated. She was of humankind, not of deer or wolf or hawk. She was separate from them. She belonged to others—other humans.
A deep sadness engulfed her. She felt a yawning hole in her soul, a deep, bottomless chasm of sorrow. She felt empty and the emptiness was a dull, throbbing ache. The open land was no longer her home, the animals no longer her family. She was cast out, alone, isolated. She had been uprooted from the nurturing soil and tossed, bruised, like a sapling by the hand of the wind. She had no home.
The mountains—ah, yes, the mountains called her. She had a home that she did not know, belonged to a place that did not belong to her. The mountains gleamed blue in the starlight. They looked cold, hard, unloving.
She shivered. The night put cold fingers to her skin. She reached for the firestones she had found and, faltering at first, struck sparks into the dry moss. A wisp of smoke curled up. The acrid smell drifted to her nostrils and she inhaled deeply, not knowing or caring that the doe had slipped silently away. More smoke pooled atop the moss, then floated like a small cloud into the night air. A tiny flame popped up and swayed gently over the moss.
She cupped her hands around the flame and it responded by growing taller. Another joined it, and another. Soon the small pile of twigs and leaves was dancing with flame.
She sat back against the bole of the tree and watched the fire. The light of the flames blotted out everything else, as if the world dropped away to indigo infinity beyond the sphere of the fire, and nothing existed except the woman and the flames. She breathed in the smoke and watched as the tongues of fire
devoured the wood.
Ah—there they were: the twin blue serpents. They were her friends. She remembered them from another time. They lifted long, sinewy necks from the fire, curled their blunt heads toward her. Their eyes were tiny black beads, glittering and hard.
They moved toward her. Half-tranced, she watched as they slithered out of the fire, across the dark ground, up to her still form. They ranged on either side of her and as she watched, they wound around her wrists, climbing, coiling up her arms. Their smoky, translucent bodies rasped across the soft underside of her arms as they coiled higher and higher, decorating her arms with countless living, writhing, shifting bracelets.
They were warm where they embraced her. She felt contented. They loved her still, had not forgotten her when all the other animals turned away. They would never forsake her. She closed her eyes and felt the warm pulse of their bodies against her arms.
Greer, a soft, rich voice said inside her head. She was too contented, too satiated to open her eyes. Greer.
Yes. She answered silently. It was too much effort to move her lips or force the air through her teeth. I am ... Greer.
The voice smiled. You are. And your time has come. You have had your years of running free with the deer. You are mine now, Greer; I call you in. The path is before you. I would that you set your feet upon it and go where it leads you. And you will do that won’t you, Greer?
Her head was too heavy to nod. Yes.
Good. You are mine, Greer; my daughter, my mother, my sister—my Sibling. You are mine, now and always. Go and take my will into the world. Go where my serpents lead you.
The voice faded. She tried to rouse, feeling she must be up and away, but none of her muscles obeyed her. It was all she could do to open her eyes and even then only to slits.
The forest was black. Far, far away, ghostly in the darkness, the mountaintops gleamed and floated.
The serpents loosed her, uncoiling as they dropped slowly away from her arms. They turned from her and aligned themselves together side by side. With her last ounce of strength, she watched them undulate off the ground, writhing up into the black night, moving off.
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